Three Days of non-Stop Fun!

WARNING: This is a long post but it's so worth it!

Ok so my week has been crazy busy. On Monday I had my Tissue expanders filled. They are looking quite nice right now. They’re like a small C big B. I picked my mom up from her house so she could see the process. Of course now that I’m getting larger the lady is asking me what size I want to be and then when I respond she’s amends her previous number of fills left (1 or 2). To say we’ll fill you until your skin can’t take it. Maybe 3 or 4 more fills. I’m not sure if there’s that much room in there but we’ll see. I’ve had weight issues all my life and if I gain weight again; which I hope won’t happen; I’m going to want my boobs not to be too small for my frame. You may say but if you get smaller then your boobs will be too big for your frame. That’s when I say ummm what’s the problem with that. LOL. I’m young and by the time I have to replace them (15 yrs) I would get smaller ones.

Next on the cancer train was my port placement. For some reason I was more nervous for this than my original mastectomy surgery. After talking with my oncologist (cancer doctor) we decided to get the port placed in my arm, a little above my inside elbow.  The port is a small catheter which goes under you skin and connects to a major vein. It has an special section where the nurses connect a needle to. This allows for easy delivery of medication. Also the nurses don’t have to look for a vein every time you need something.  Even though I’m only having 4 treatments I didn’t want to have to deal with getting stuck and dealing with the bruises. Especially since surgery I’ve had issues with my veins.

In any case the night before surgery the nurse form the hospital calls (while I’m doing my nails, b\c that’s what is important), and is asking me all these lovely questions. Then we start talking about blood pressure and IV placement. The thing is when you have a mastectomy you’re not supposed to have your blood pressure (BP) taken on your arm. Seeing that I had a double mastectomy I’m supposed to have the BP taken on my foot. The problem is that my foot BP is like 30+ points higher when it’s only supposed to be like 10 or 15. I’m also not supposed to get blood taken or IV’s placed in the arms. This is all due to lymphedema (where your arm swells up b\c the lymph fluid has no place to go). I didn’t have that many lymph nodes taken so I’m at a lower risk. However seeing that I got cancer at 26 I’m not trying to chance it. In any case he’s like we can discuss it in the AM. My nurse first asks me about the BP and I was like if it’s a one time BP then pls take it on my arm b\c my leg is SUPER high. She’s like ohh it’s one time and u won have to do it again. Next thing I know the anesthesiologist is asking me about taking my BP. I AGAIN re-explain the situation and he’s like ohh well take it on you leg it’s fine. After he tries to get the first reading he looks up to me and is like ohhh I need to take it on your arm so I can get a baseline..SMH. The nurse then says if she can get the IV in one stick I’m fine. I’m just like it’s 7am and I’m not in the mood. She sees a “Good Vein” and proceeds to put the IV in and guess what happens…NOTHING! So I have to get stuck in the top of my hand. After all that I get wheeled into the room. Slip over to the bed then they put me out. I wake up in recovery feeling good. My mom takes me home and I continue working (I worked in pre-op and post op) … No Judgment!

My Loveley IV (Check out them nails):

It Looked nice and neat when I woke up:

The Chemo train comes to town on Wednesday 5/2/2012 at 8am. Of course like everything else in my list it’s not on time! So I get there late by about 15 min. I wait another 20 and finally get called into the back. Nadia and I end up at this nice back corner with 2 recliners (the other rooms have a recliner and a chair). We wait another 20 min while all the ppl who got seated before us are now getting weighed and their ports accessed.  It’s not a quick process and we literally had like 7 women before us. My doctor works for the Memorial System in the breast cancer center at the regional hospital. It’s in a separate building across the street, and EVERYONE is super sweet. So because I had my port placed yesterday the nurse was extra gentle pulling off the wound dressing. We took it off and I nearly fell out my chair. I had the biggest ugliest bruise I ever had in my life. The actual incision doesn’t look bad but everything around it is awful. In any case the nurse begins to say she shouldn’t spray the area to numb it b\c I could damage the skin since it’s bruised. She says it just feels like a pin prick and I’m like ok. Her access the port was like 2 seconds and it 100% didn’t hurt.

So then I wait another 20 min or so for pharmacy to get my meds together. We get started at sometime after 10 and are done at 1:30 ish. The whole process goes a little something like this. You get a pre-treatment cocktail of preventative drugs for 20 min. It has anti-nausea, steroids and other stuff. Then I get my first drug for and hour and 15 and my second for an hour. They do each drug rather slowly so they can determine if you have any issues. On the second drug I had to ask her to slow it down b\c I was having sinus issues. That is one of the possible side effects so it wasn’t a biggie. After all of that we were done! I feel fine but a little tired. They say in order to keep the nausea away you must eat 5-6 meals a day and drink plenty of water. So I’m working on all of that. I’ll post before the end of the weekend explaining if I have any issues. Thanks for reading I know it was long. Below are the last two pictures which includes my SUPER bruised arm.

Nadia and I in our Super Comfy corner:

My ugly arm: